"After the divorce, I said, 'I have to do something with myself,'" she says.

Uninspired by the "boring jobs" that most women in Japan had at the time, Shinohara left Japan and moved to Europe. That's where she observed, for the first time, the notion of "temporary workers."

That inspired the start-up idea that made her a baroness.

"Mistakes are the sea of opportunity," she tells the Harvard Business Review.

Shinohara went back to Japan in 1973, realized that she was not interested in any of the jobs available to her and decided to start her own temporary staffing agency. She launched what her company out of a one-room apartment in the middle of Tokyo, according to an HBR biography.

Introducing temporary employment in Japan in the 1970's was a risk. It was even illegal at the time.

"I used to say to myself: 'I wonder what it's like in jail.'"-Yoshiko Shinohara, founder and chairman emeritus, Temp Holdings

"Lifetime employment was the norm in Japan, and temping by private companies was banned under law, so I was often summoned by the ministry," she says. "I used to say to myself: 'I wonder what it's like in jail. How big are the rooms? Is there a toilet or a window?'"

Eventually, the law changed and temporary employment became legal.

Her second push against the tidal wave of public opinion was to bring men into the office. Until the 1980's, her company, Temp Holdings, was all women.

"So in 1988, I said, 'How about if we put some men in here?' The managers said, 'No, thank you, we don't need any of those creatures.' But we did need them," says Shinohara.

"A branch happened to hire a man as a part-timer, and wow, did sales increase! That was the turning point. The trick was achieving the right mix of men and women."